Alexandra Borrie came into the Women Studies Research Center on Tuesday, Nov. 1 clad in typical 20th-century garb and a superior British accent to recreate one of the most acclaimed feminist literary figures of her time, Virginia Woolf. Borrie spoke with a stubborn elegance as she reenacted passages from Woolf's extended essay, A Room of One's Own.

Borrie, who has taught acting at the Tisch School of New York University and at Muhlenberg College, has had a long career performing on Broadway and has accumulated a wealth of directing credits. She is also a founding member of Vocollage, a performance group that uses both music and text, which premiered an original production titled "Sho'ah Voices" this past spring.

A refined stream of classical music played in the background, emanating from a recorder. Borrie marched around the room giving voice to the lectures that Woolf gave to numerous women's colleges in England. As Borrie spoke of how "a woman must have money and a room of one's own if she wants to write fiction," she managed to highlight the necessity for a woman to have private space, money and time to create art. "Making money didn't interest me, I'd better leave that to my husband," she said, which drew laughs from the predominately female audience.

Not only did Borrie manage to give Woolf's challenging prose a voice, but she also stayed in character throughout the entire performance. She made use of the entire room, moving to and from the couch and covering the entire perimeter to ask a string of thought-provoking questions to the audience members. "Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?" Borrie, still as Woolf, ended the performance by showing a montage of photographs showing libraries, churches, dining halls and what Oxford University looked like at night.

Borrie was inspired by reading A Room of One's Own and enjoying the book's topic; she wasn't searching for a particular subject on which to base her performance. Borrie said that she sympathizes with Woolf in the struggle of trying to get paid for art. She defines her performances, which are typically an hour or, as "chamber performances of text and music. [You] learn more when you come at things [from] different angles. The shows are designed for aural consumption."

During the question-and-answer portion, a woman in the audience posed a question specifically to the younger crowd who attended the event. She inquired if the elements that Woolf discussed were too dated for young women in our modern era. The consensus from the younger crowd was that topics such as a woman's access to education and the history of women's writings were relatable, not archaic. However, on the topic of motherhood and spouse-related duties, different kinds of challenges were discussed. Another woman touched on the issue of fundraising, saying that women will not make donations without consulting their husbands, and that if both members of a couple have both graduated from college, the donation will likely go to the man's college.

Ann M. Caldwell, president emerita of the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions, contested that claim. She said that statistically, per capita, women give more money to their colleges (single-sex schools), than men. And when the school was coed, both sexes donated more money than they would have to a single-sex college.

Woolf also mentions a tale of a woman who rejects motherhood in her essay, which sparked discussion about the role of a woman in the home and sacrifices that she must make. Various women spoke of the ever-persistent stereotype of men being the breadwinners and women working in the home. Woolf, nevertheless, does not blame this on men because "life for both sexes … is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion that we are, it calls for confidence in oneself."

What I believed to be a reading of the tragic literary hero Virgina Woolf turned into a charged, analytical discussion of feminism, fundraising and a look at how Woolf's themes apply to current day struggles.

Borrie's fusion of music and text created the necessary medium to give Woolf's 1929 essay a modern voice, creating a riveting stir of debate applicable to a modern-day audience.